IA's Presidential Endorsement: Vladimir the Great!

"If Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were president of the [US], would Iran try to build a nuclear bomb? Would Pakistan provide covert aid to al-Qaeda? Would Hugo Chavez train terrorists in Venzuela? Would leftover nationalities with delusions of grandeur provoke the great powers? Just ask Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvilli, who now wishes he never tried to put his 4 million countrymen into strategic play. ... Thanks to Putin, the world has become a much safer place. By intervening in Georgia, Russia has demonstrated that the great powers of the world have nothing to fight about. ... Contrary to the hyperventilation of policy analysts on American news shows, the West has no vital interests in Georgia. ... It is humilating for the US to watch the Russians thrash a prospective ally, but not harmful, for Georgia should never have been an ally in the first place. The lack of consequences of Russia's incursion is a noteworthy fact, for never before in the history of the world has the world's military and economic power resided in countries whose fundamental interests do not conflict in any important way. ... Once it became clear that Russia would not tolerate a NATO member on its southern border, however, Washington had nothing to say about the matter, because no fundamental Ameriocan interests were at stake. ... After the US and its main European allies recognized the independence of Kosovo from Serbia in February 2008, Russia warned that this action set a precedent for other prospective secessions, notable South Ossetia. ... If the West is going to put itself at risk for 3.8 million ethnic Georgians, roughly the population of Los Angeles, or 5.4 million Tibetans, or 2 million Albanian Muslims in Kosovo, why shouldn't Russia take risks for the South Ossetians, not to mention the 100,000 Abkaz speakers in Georgia's secessionist Black Sea province? ... Precisely what were the 3.8 million freedom-loving Georgians supposed to contribute to American strategic interests with its $2 billion a year of exports consisting (according to the [CIA] World Factbook) of 'scrap metal, wine, mineral water, ores, vehicles, fruits and nuts'? ... If it had not been for America's insistence on installing a gang of trigger-happy pimps and drug-pushers in Kosovo, Russia might have responded less ferociously to the flea bites on its southern border .... America remains so committed to the myth of moderate Islam that it is prepared to invent it. Kosovo, like the Turkey of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, supposedly embodies a moderate, Sufi-derived brand of Islam that will foster an American partnership with the Muslim world. ... There is no 'clash of civilizations', for Confucian, Hindu, American and Orthodox civilization cannot find grounds for a clash. ... The most visible prospective spoiler in the pack remains Iran. If American wants to recover from its humilation in the Caucusus, it might, for example, conduct an air raid against Iran's nuclear facilities, and justify it with the same sort of reasoning that Russia invoked in Georgia. Contrary to the surface impressions , Moscow wouldn't mind a bit", my emphasis, Spengler at http://www.atimes.com/, 12 August 2008.

.

I love this guy! Spengler for Putin's foreign minister! Not only do I not think Moscow would mind our destroying Iran's nuclear facilities, I think Russia will join in the festivities. I can see Czar Vladimir the Great (VTG) telling Bush, "there's 636,000 square miles of Iran, how many do you want"? Upon hearing this, Bush faints leaving Czar Vladimir stupefied.

Watching VTG's "romp" through Georgia reminded me of this, "One time, years ago, the veteran Baltimore newspaperman, H.L. Mencken, was checking copy coming in from the night editor and sighing at the rising number of errors he was noticing, errors of fact but also of syntax, and even some idioms that didn't sound quite right. He shook his head and said, as much to himself as to the editor at his side: 'The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology,' Alistair Cooke, Memories of the Great and the Good", reported by George Will at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/, 3 June 2007. That includes Czardom. Viva Putin! Where can the US find one like him?